Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Music Theory (11)
- Music Performance (9)
- Composition (5)
- Music Practice (5)
- History (4)
-
- Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (4)
- African American Studies (3)
- Cultural History (3)
- Ethnomusicology (3)
- Other Arts and Humanities (3)
- Other Music (3)
- American Popular Culture (2)
- American Studies (2)
- Audio Arts and Acoustics (2)
- Business (2)
- Digital Humanities (2)
- European History (2)
- Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (2)
- Music Pedagogy (2)
- Women's Studies (2)
- Aesthetics (1)
- Anthropology (1)
- Archaeological Anthropology (1)
- Art and Design (1)
- Chinese Studies (1)
- East Asian Languages and Societies (1)
- Ethnic Studies (1)
- Institution
-
- City University of New York (CUNY) (11)
- University of Tennessee, Knoxville (4)
- James Madison University (3)
- University of Kentucky (3)
- University of Massachusetts Amherst (2)
-
- Western University (2)
- Bard College (1)
- Bowling Green State University (1)
- California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (1)
- California State University, Monterey Bay (1)
- DePauw University (1)
- Eastern Kentucky University (1)
- Louisiana State University (1)
- Seattle Pacific University (1)
- Southeastern University (1)
- The University of Akron (1)
- The University of Southern Mississippi (1)
- University of Louisville (1)
- Keyword
-
- Music (9)
- American Music (2)
- Gender (2)
- Music Education (2)
- Opera (2)
-
- Pedagogy (2)
- Piano music (2)
- Popular music (2)
- R&B (2)
- Rhythm (2)
- ''Prélude Choral et Fugue'' (1)
- 1980s (1)
- 1990s (1)
- Acculturation process (1)
- Album amicorum (1)
- Allusions in music (1)
- American music (1)
- American popular culture (1)
- Analysis (1)
- Animals (1)
- Anne Ford (1)
- Anti-Semitism (1)
- Armonica (1)
- Audition arias (1)
- Autograph book (1)
- Baroque (1)
- Bassoon (1)
- Beckett and music (1)
- Benjamin Franklin (1)
- Biography (1)
- Publication
-
- Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects (10)
- Masters Theses (6)
- Theses and Dissertations--Music (3)
- Dissertations, 2014-2019 (2)
- Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository (2)
-
- Honors Projects (2)
- Capstone Projects and Master's Theses (1)
- Dissertations (1)
- Electronic Theses and Dissertations (1)
- History (1)
- Honor Scholar Theses (1)
- LSU Doctoral Dissertations (1)
- Online Theses and Dissertations (1)
- Selected Honors Theses (1)
- Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019 (1)
- Senior Projects Spring 2017 (1)
- Theses and Dissertations (1)
- Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects (1)
Articles 1 - 30 of 37
Full-Text Articles in Musicology
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Century Bassoon Tutors And Their Published Contributions To Bassoon Pedagogy, Gina Michelle Moore
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Century Bassoon Tutors And Their Published Contributions To Bassoon Pedagogy, Gina Michelle Moore
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
This research project is a survey of eighteenth and nineteenth century bassoon tutors and their contributions to bassoon pedagogy. Tutors for this project were chosen from the two main schools of bassoon playing and pedagogy during the time centered in France and Germany. Bassoon teachers surveyed will include: Joseph Frölich, Karl Almenräder, Christian Julius Weissenborn, Ludwig Milde, Etienne Ozi, Eugène Jancourt, and Eugène Bourdeau.
Connection Between Visual Arts And Music: The Painting And Music Of I-Uen Wang Hwang, Yining Jenny Jiang
Connection Between Visual Arts And Music: The Painting And Music Of I-Uen Wang Hwang, Yining Jenny Jiang
Dissertations, 2014-2019
This document explores the connection between the visual arts and music, particularly focusing on the similarity between visual and aural artistic expression by analyzing two sets of piano pieces composed by I-Uen Wang Hwang, a contemporary Taiwanese-American composer and artist. The piano pieces are Dream Garden, Series I and II (2000-2004) and Preludes for Piano (2016). Series I of Dream Garden contains two piano solo compositions based on a series of Hwang’s own watercolor works. Each composition has an analogous painting: “The Horn of the Plenty” and “Butterfly Orchid”. Series II includes two compositions written for two pianos: “Red and …
Villa-Lobos's Compositional Techniques And Treatment Of Folk Melodies In Cirandas For Piano, Gustavo Schafaschek
Villa-Lobos's Compositional Techniques And Treatment Of Folk Melodies In Cirandas For Piano, Gustavo Schafaschek
Dissertations
Despite his significance as the most important Latin American composer of the twentieth century, serious analytical studies on the music of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos are still few and far between. Recent scholarship has started to demystify the figure of Villa-Lobos as an intuitive composer with no technique, revealing an artist that strove to develop an idiosyncratic musical language. The present document aims to contribute to this new trend in Villa-Lobos’s scholarship by analyzing pieces from the piano cycle Cirandas, W220, considered one of the most important works from the composer’s mature style. Each of the sixteen pieces …
Northern Music Culture In Antebellum New Orleans, Warren Keith Kimball
Northern Music Culture In Antebellum New Orleans, Warren Keith Kimball
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
In the three decades before the Civil War, immigrants from the Northern United States flooded into New Orleans in search of new economic opportunities. These newcomers brought to the Southern city many elements of Northern life, such as Protestant churches, English-language newspapers, public schools, and distinct political views. They also brought with them musical practices specific to that region: Protestant church music, amateur choral societies, instrumental concerts, music publication, and English-language opera all flourished from the late 1830s until the late 1850s. This dissertation situates the musical practices of New Orleans during the decades preceding the Civil War within the …
Worlds Of If: Analyses Of The Composed And Improvised Works Of Robert Dick, Melissa Keeling
Worlds Of If: Analyses Of The Composed And Improvised Works Of Robert Dick, Melissa Keeling
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Considered one of the most important publications in twentieth-century flute pedagogy, Robert Dick’s seminal method book, The Other Flute (1975),[1] is an extensive catalogue of multiphonic fingerings, microtonal fingerings, glissandi, circular breathing, and other extended techniques. The Other Flute and a handful of his published solos are widely studied, but these works only represent a fraction of Dick’s creative energies.
Equally comfortable in classical, jazz, rock, electronic, and world music, Dick’s oeuvre demonstrates a sophisticated, musical use of contemporary techniques and his pieces have become standard repertoire. Though Dick was not the first flutist to use or notate these …
A New Approach To The Analysis Of Timbre, Megan L. Lavengood
A New Approach To The Analysis Of Timbre, Megan L. Lavengood
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Two distinct approaches to timbre analysis exist, each with complementary strengths and limitations. First, music theorists from the 1980s adopt a positivist mindset and look for ways to quantify timbral phenomena, often using spectrograms, while avoiding any cultural dimensions in their work. Second, writings of the past five years focus on the cultural aspects of timbre but make no use of spectrograms. This dissertation builds upon these two approaches by synthesizing them: discussion is grounded in spectrogram analysis, but situated within a broad cultural context, through interactions with listener experience and ethnographic study of music periodicals and other published interviews. …
The Varieties Of Tone Presence: On The Meanings Of Musical Tone In Twentieth-Century Music, Aaron Harcus
The Varieties Of Tone Presence: On The Meanings Of Musical Tone In Twentieth-Century Music, Aaron Harcus
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation is about tone presence, or how musical tone shows up for experience in twentieth-century music. In exploring the subject of tone presence, I rethink notions of “pitch structure” in post-tonal theory and offer an alternative that focuses on the question of what it is to be a musical interval for experience, drawing on a wide range of research from social theory, semiotics, theories of emotion, African American studies, literary theory, usage-based linguistics, post-colonial theory, and phenomenology. I begin by offering a critique of three basic assumptions that constrain understandings of what we mean by pitch structure in post-tonal …
Constructing Music Of Rebellion In The Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock In The 1990s United States, David Pearson
Constructing Music Of Rebellion In The Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock In The 1990s United States, David Pearson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In the late 1980s, the punk scene in the United States was plagued by Nazi skinheads, the macho violence of “straight-edge hardcore,” and musical stagnation. Moreover, Ronald Reagan, the symbol of all that punks detested, was no longer president, the Cold War was coming to an end, and the United States was fast becoming the world’s sole superpower. These dilemmas put punk rock’s viability as a music of rebellion against the dominant order in a state of crisis.
Emerging out of this late 1980s malaise was a new wave of (leftist) political bands that took lyrical aim at the New …
“Get Your Geek On”: Online And Offline Representations Of Audiotopia Within The Geekycon Community, Sarah Frances Holder
“Get Your Geek On”: Online And Offline Representations Of Audiotopia Within The Geekycon Community, Sarah Frances Holder
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the musical community of GeekyCon, a convention centered around popular media, such as Harry Potter, Broadway, and Disney. The GeekyCon community results from the connection between the unofficial convention Facebook group and the yearly physical event. This interconnectivity allows both the live and mediated space of GeekyCon to function as a heterotopia, a concept first conceived by Foucault (1967) as a separate space outside of the dominant society in which ideas and identities can be freely explored. Through ethnographic research, including participant observation as well as interviews, I present the music of GeekyCon as an audiotopia, a …
Mothers Who Live: Gender Subversion And Resilience In Leoš Janáček’S Jenůfa, Megan Lynne Whiteman
Mothers Who Live: Gender Subversion And Resilience In Leoš Janáček’S Jenůfa, Megan Lynne Whiteman
Masters Theses
Leoš Janáček’s opera Jenůfa, which premiered in 1904, takes place in a secluded Moravian village and details the story of two women, Jenůfa and Kostelnička. They are intertwined through an act of infanticide, family dynamics, and gender expectations. Recognized as the first Czech naturalist dramatist, Gabriela Preissová wrote the Czech realist play, Její pastorkyňa [Her Stepdaughter] (1890), which provided prose for the opera. Tragedies often occur in Jenůfa due to women defying social norms and the problems that arise as a result of their actions. The gender transgressions of Jenůfa and Kostelnička—actions that deviate from gender expectations …
Extemporizing Pippi, Experimenting Spunk: Community, Temporality, And The Politics Of Free Improvisation, Benjamin Alan Oyler
Extemporizing Pippi, Experimenting Spunk: Community, Temporality, And The Politics Of Free Improvisation, Benjamin Alan Oyler
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the music of the Oslo-based experimental ensemble SPUNK. Maja S.K. Ratkje, Kristin Andersen, Lene Grenager, and Hild Sofie Tafjord have operated at the juncture of site-specific conceptual art and experimentalism since the early 1990s, recording and releasing much of their work for Norway’s Rune Grammofon label. Employing voice, electronics, and acoustic instrumentation in a free improvisational style, the group’s music demonstrates a robust and varied engagement with a range of experimental and avant-garde traditions.
Drawing from ethnographic, theoretical, and historical methodologies, as well as my own experiences as a free improvisor and listener, I situate SPUNK’s work …
Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, And Censorship: Reflections On Religious And Political Radicalism In John Adams’S The Death Of Klinghoffer, Allison R. Smith
Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, And Censorship: Reflections On Religious And Political Radicalism In John Adams’S The Death Of Klinghoffer, Allison R. Smith
Masters Theses
The issue of anti-Semitism in John Adams’s 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, has been widely discussed by scholars such as Richard Taruskin, Robert Fink, and others. For instance, Taruskin asserts that Adams favors the Palestinians through musical grandiosity and by describing them as “men of ideals.” However, this fails to consider the possibility that Adams intended to portray an evenhanded view of diverse religious groups. Through close readings of the libretto and select numbers from Klinghoffer, such as the “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians,” the “Chorus of Exiled Jews,” and the “Aria of the Falling Body,” my thesis maintains that …
Gender Ambivalence In Late-Renaissance Italy: The Career And Reception Of Tarquinia Molza, Kathryn Firth
Gender Ambivalence In Late-Renaissance Italy: The Career And Reception Of Tarquinia Molza, Kathryn Firth
Masters Theses
The role of women changed constantly during the Renaissance era. Especially notable was the evolution of the role of women within the arts, in which the female gender was becoming particularly sought after. One woman deserving of attention is poetess, philosopher, and musician Tarquinia Molza (1542-1617) who enjoyed notable success at the court of Ferrara. Molza by-passed gender conventions of the day by engaging in traditionally “masculine” activities like philosophy and “feminine” ones such as singing. While there is plentiful scholarship about Molza, no current scholarship has specifically considered how questions regarding the ambivalence of her gender affected Molza’s relationship …
Audio Mastering As A Musical Competency, Matthew T. Shelvock
Audio Mastering As A Musical Competency, Matthew T. Shelvock
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
In this dissertation, I demonstrate that audio mastering is a musical competency by elucidating the most significant, and clearly audible, facets of this competence. In fact, the mastering process impacts traditionally valued musical aspects of records, such as timbre and dynamics. By applying the emerging creative scholarship method used within the field of music production studies, this dissertation will aid scholars seeking to hear and understand audio mastering by elucidating its core practices as musical endeavours. And, in so doing, I hope to enable increased clarity and accuracy in future scholarly discussions on the topic of audio mastering, as well …
Empirical Aesthetics And The Philosophy Of John Cage: A Literature Review And Experimental Study, Braden J. Gillispie
Empirical Aesthetics And The Philosophy Of John Cage: A Literature Review And Experimental Study, Braden J. Gillispie
Honors Projects
This paper examines the musical philosophy of composer John Cage in terms of psychological theories and experimental design. A literature review was first conducted to extract testable hypotheses from Cage’s musical works, writings, and interviews relevant to theories and research in empirical aesthetics. A study was then devised to examine the relationships between cognitive appraisals of the interestingness, enjoyableness, orderliness, and musicality of general sound events, as well as to determine the influence of openness to experience and the effect of two intentional-listening strategies, inspired by Cage’s ideas, on these relationships. Participants (n = 21) completed an openness to …
Gustave Vogt's Musical Album Of Autographs: A Scholarly Edition, Kristin Leitterman
Gustave Vogt's Musical Album Of Autographs: A Scholarly Edition, Kristin Leitterman
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Gustave Vogt (1781–1870) was the most famous oboist in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century. Throughout his career he played with the best orchestras in Paris, toured Europe widely, and also taught the next generation of oboists at the Paris Conservatoire from 1802–1853. Although many of the details of his life have been lost to history, he did leave behind a record of the esteem in which he was held. This is preserved physically in the form of an album of short musical compositions honoring Vogt, collected between 1831 and 1859. The album has never been published, and is in the …
Reimagining The Collective: Black Popular Music And Recording Studio Innovation, 1970-1990, Will Fulton
Reimagining The Collective: Black Popular Music And Recording Studio Innovation, 1970-1990, Will Fulton
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation examines developments in the production practices of black popular music in the recording studio from 1970 to 1990. The year 1970 marked a transition in the recording practice of popular music that had a distinct impact on styles marketed as R&B, soul, and funk. Multitracking in the 1950s and 1960s had paved the way for a transformed production process, one initiated by Les Paul’s and Sidney Bechet’s overdubbing experiments in the 1940s. The collective sound of instrumentalists and vocalists heard on records no longer resulted from live-to-tape recordings of group performances, but was increasingly the product of constructed …
Eighteenth Century Women And The Business Of Making Glass Music, Kate M. Hepworth
Eighteenth Century Women And The Business Of Making Glass Music, Kate M. Hepworth
History
During the relatively short period from the mid-to-late eighteenth century when glass musical instruments were manufactured and gained popularity, several women made names for themselves in the realm of avant-garde musical performance. The lives of three female glass instrument players: Anne Ford, Marianne Davies, and Marianne Kirchgassner, show how these successful performer-entrepreneurs operated in an age of emerging feminine public identity. Their journeys reveal much about the gender dimensions of the age, the role of music in the modern era, the consumption of it, and their approach to business. The financial opportunities presented to women looking to challenge the limitations …
Out Of The Shadows: Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, And The Will To Persist, Juella Baltonado
Out Of The Shadows: Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, And The Will To Persist, Juella Baltonado
Theses and Dissertations
Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn are known most commonly for their associations with their male counterparts, and often have their identities and accomplishments overshadowed by these men. This thesis shines a light on these women, uncovering the struggles with gender, agency, and societal expectations.
A Musical Crusade: Reviving The Music Of Berlioz’S Benvenuto Cellini Through A Comparative Statistical, Pedagogical, And Theoretical Analysis, Jessica R. Spafford
A Musical Crusade: Reviving The Music Of Berlioz’S Benvenuto Cellini Through A Comparative Statistical, Pedagogical, And Theoretical Analysis, Jessica R. Spafford
Dissertations, 2014-2019
Abstract
Much of the operatic music of the eccentric French composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is overlooked, especially from his first full opera Benvenuto Cellini. This is due in part to many misconceptions surrounding Berlioz’s vocal compositional style, which stem from the political atmosphere at the time of the opera’s premiere in 1838 Paris when ill-willed critics renamed it Malvenuto Cellini. A general ignorance of this work and its music pervades the world of vocal pedagogy, having been excluded from the standard repertoire anthologies, where it can ironically be the most useful. The research presented in this project comprises …
Uncovering The Confusing Influence Experts Have On Music Copyright Cases, Arata-Enrique Kaku
Uncovering The Confusing Influence Experts Have On Music Copyright Cases, Arata-Enrique Kaku
Honors Projects
Contemporary copyright decisions by Federal Courts perplex composers; am I the creative composer, or am I an infringer on someone else’s intellectual property? By forming a temporary monopoly to monetize new content, copyright protection incentivizes artists to be fruitful. In a creative field like music, an overly broad definition of copyrightable expression can lead to a “chilling effect” on creativity. This chilling effect is exacerbated by the great latitude given expert witnesses to claim infringement based on broad classifications of expressions. My paper addresses the question: To what extent should expert witnesses be probative when they extend ownership rights beyond …
The Sounds Behind Language : Three Musical Settings Of Beckett's Not I By Heinz Holliger, Paul Rhys, And Agata Zubel., Trevor Roy Dejarnett
The Sounds Behind Language : Three Musical Settings Of Beckett's Not I By Heinz Holliger, Paul Rhys, And Agata Zubel., Trevor Roy Dejarnett
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Samuel Beckett’s literary and dramatic works have served as sources of inspiration in the last five decades for multiple composers such as Morton Feldman and György Kurtág. Beckett’s late minimalist monologue Not I (1972) is the basis for recent compositions by Heinz Holliger, Paul Rhys, and Agata Zubel. While scholars have discussed similarities between Beckett’s style and individual musical works, a comprehensive study of multiple compositions based on the same work by Samuel Beckett has not yet been completed. Each of these compositions reflects various aspects of Beckett’s late dramatic style such as his use of rhythm, depiction of internal …
Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg
Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg
Masters Theses
Standup comedy actively performs and engages with constructions of self and social identity, especially in terms of ethnic difference and the negotiation of American race relations. Musical comedy, wherein standup comedians perform song onstage, represents one facet of this expression that configures musical texts and expectations in the service of cultural observation and critique. Bo Burnham and Reggie Watts characterize two disparate approaches to the practice based on their aesthetic tastes, existential anxieties, and racial experiences. The two present their respective identities onstage in relation to a changing American political landscape of the early 21st century that has seen widespread …
A Discussion Regarding Various Animals' Abilities To Make Music And Move Rhythmically To Songs, Emilie R. Bufford
A Discussion Regarding Various Animals' Abilities To Make Music And Move Rhythmically To Songs, Emilie R. Bufford
Capstone Projects and Master's Theses
This project involves exploring the presence of music and rhythmic abilities in specific animal species. The main subjects are whales, sea lions, gorillas, elephants, birds, and mice. The goal of this project was to compare their abilities to those of humans, and overall, determine whether such abilities are considered musical. Cases where animals demonstrate the ability, both learned and innate, to move to a beat are analyzed, along with animals who demonstrate musical vocal abilities naturally in the wild. The previously unknown frequencies of whales, mice, and elephants, are brought to light. These findings bring up the possibility of even …
Musical Genre Identification And Differentiation Of Rock, R&B/Hip-Hop, And Christian Songs Through Harmonic Analysis, Nolan A. Foxworth
Musical Genre Identification And Differentiation Of Rock, R&B/Hip-Hop, And Christian Songs Through Harmonic Analysis, Nolan A. Foxworth
Selected Honors Theses
This thesis attempts to identify and distinguish musical genre through harmonic analysis. The genres of Rock, R&B/Hip-Hop, and Christian have been selected for this study. The top ten songs from each genre (as listed by Billboard’s Year End Charts) are analyzed and contrasted with those of other genres in an attempt to prove that harmonic analysis alone is sufficient to identify the genre of an unknown song. Heavy in analysis, this thesis will find structure in music and use that structure to more deeply appreciate not only the study of genre, but of music itself.
The Art Of Borrowing: Intertextuality In The French Motet Of The Late Middle Ages, Eleanor Price
The Art Of Borrowing: Intertextuality In The French Motet Of The Late Middle Ages, Eleanor Price
Honor Scholar Theses
No abstract provided.
Teleology In César Franck's Prélude, Choral Et Fugue, Stephanie Gouin
Teleology In César Franck's Prélude, Choral Et Fugue, Stephanie Gouin
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
César Franck’s Prélude, Choral et Fugue is a fine example of the composer’s mature style and contribution to musical form and language at the end of the nineteenth century. The use of a Baroque structure, such as the fugue, has a significant impact on the overall unfolding of this Romantic work. A teleological perspective will inform the analysis of the Fugue, which will constitute the core of the study. It will use concepts of design and purpose in order to explain the development of the piece as a whole, and the transformation of the musical language within the Fugue in …
The Analysis Of Musical Dramaturgy In Mozart's Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail, Danielle J. Bastone
The Analysis Of Musical Dramaturgy In Mozart's Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail, Danielle J. Bastone
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
It has long been recognized that the music of Mozart’s Singspiels bears more dramatic weight than that of most eighteenth-century German comic operas. Yet this view arises from a body of scholarship that heavily privileges Die Zauberflöte at the expense of Mozart’s other German-language operatic works, including Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), which constituted Mozart’s first big statement in Vienna and became easily the most popular of his operas during his lifetime. This is an analytical study of Mozart’s Entführung that examines form, phrase rhythm, and text-setting as agents of musical dramaturgy throughout the score. More specifically, it demonstrates …
Heinrich Schenker’S Early Approach To Form, 1895–1921: Implications For His Late Work And Its Reception, Jason A. Hooper
Heinrich Schenker’S Early Approach To Form, 1895–1921: Implications For His Late Work And Its Reception, Jason A. Hooper
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation constructs Heinrich Schenker’s early approach to form and traces its development as his organic theory of transformational voice leading emerged in the early 1920s. Schenker’s late approach to form is then briefly reconsidered from this newfound perspective.
Chapter 1 defines the nineteenth-century Formenlehre tradition established by A. B. Marx and passed down to Anton Bruckner through his studies in model composition, leading to Schenker himself. Chapter 2 presents Schenker’s early approach to form in a generative fashion, demonstrating how a single motive can grow into a large thematic group unified by a single key area or an economy …
A Study Of Nikolai Medtner's Compositional Technique: Form And Narrative In Tales, Oliver H. Markson
A Study Of Nikolai Medtner's Compositional Technique: Form And Narrative In Tales, Oliver H. Markson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation delves into the compositional approach of Russian-born composer Nikolai Medtner. A discussion of Medtner’s own words on composition from his book The Muse and Fashion: Being a Defence of the Foundations of the Art of Music is followed by original analyses of four Tales. Focus is placed on the composer’s philosophy regarding the relationship between form and narrative, in association with his expressed warnings of the dangers behind shifting compositional dominance from pure music to extra-musical narrative. The analyses are followed by a discussion of the vital importance of Medtner’s music and writings for future generations of composers. …